Chemical-biological sensors represent a rapidly expanding field with an estimated 60% annual growth rate in fields such as the health care industry, homeland security, the food industry, the military, and environmental monitoring. Sensors in the health care industry are currently a $1 billion/year market, for example. There is an increasing demand for inexpensive and reliable sensors for doctor's offices, emergency rooms, and operating rooms. Homeland security has been a recent thrust in sensor development. It is desirable to install real time monitoring and alarm systems at potential terrorist sites to detect specific analytes such as ricin, nerve gas, explosives, or biological agents. The food industry can also benefit greatly from chemical-biological sensors. Several new sensors have been created in recent years to detect bad fish, e-coli, lead and mercury poisoning, heavy metals, bitterness in beer, toxicity in foods, and more. The military requires rapid analysis of a situation for successful operations. The presence of a chemical or biological warfare agent needs to be detected as fast as possible to limit exposure to troops.
Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has mandated more environmental monitoring every year. Common environmental monitoring analytes are biological oxygen demand (BOD), atmospheric acidity, pH, detergents, herbicides, and fertilizer concentrations in drainage and river water. Monitoring systems can be installed at sites of potential pollution to limit the spread of pollutants.
The potential for biosensor technology is great, and the potential impact is far reaching. Nature offers a variety of molecules with abilities to recognize chemical and biological substances, from pheromones to environmental odors. These molecules can be utilized for military as well as civilian applications by designing them to specifically bind to chemicals such as those used in explosives, biological agents, or environmental pollutants providing the possibility for a quick, highly specific and inexpensive detection system of these compounds. Research and development in the chemical-biological sensor field combines Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Material Science, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science. While there are methods which yield detection limits in the parts-per-billion regime in principle, lack of specificity and irregularities due to interferences are problems yet to be solved. Thus, there remain ongoing needs for sensors that solve these deficiencies and also provide inexpensive, compact, and reliable sensors.